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My feeling is that the agenda for change won't go far enough and that after this process we will still have a curriculum that doesn't have enough clarity and won't address the concerns many school staff have held for a long time. The school-level focus on moderation, tracking and reporting of attainment levels often feels pointless due to the lack of shared understanding of what is being taught and assessed. I have experienced this in all schools and local authorities I have worked in - I don't feel this is good enough for the pupils we teach. People often mention we need to teach skills for a new job market, however isn't it the case we can think more critically when we are better informed with underpinning knowledge and understanding.

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Getting agreement from everyone about what the curriculum should include and how this looks is going to be an impossible task. From the readings, it feels like those in favour of experiential-based learning generally oppose the idea of knowledge and role of knowing things within the curriculum. Whereas I feel there needs to be a better balance between the two, with clarity on what exactly is being taught. I feel if this is not something that is agreed nationally and set out for schools, we continue to risk an imbalance of school experience and have pupils leaving education knowing and experiencing things that others don't. I do believe the lack of curriculum clarity has been a contributor to the attainment gap and the attainment results we publish.

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For a long time school staff have been 'playing it by luck' due to the lack of clarity currently offered with CfE. While it was set up with good intentions, my experience in different schools and local authorities to date has demonstrated to me that the quality of experience and learning on offer is often a fluke based on the quality of the teacher and how much they are able to think about what they are teaching and why. Sadly I have worked with many leaders who have attempted to do this, but at surface level only i.e. jumping on the new trend without thinking about the longer term. The paper by Patterson and Robertson offered an encouraging and genuine thought provoking opportunity for improvement in this area. I hope that school leaders and policy makers will engage with such discussions to stop pupils being lucky, or not.

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How can we better support educators to feel prepared and confident when adopting new curriculum approaches?

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Challenges in leading curriculum development 

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Challenges in leading curriculum development 

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Several significant challenges arise in curriculum development. Resistance to change can be a barrier; educators often hesitate to adopt new approaches if they feel unprepared or unsupported, a problem which can be increased by vague policy language.

Workload and time constraints also pose difficulties. Curriculum development demands extra time from educators who already face demanding workloads, and releasing staff to participate can be challenging, potentially leading to unequal representation and input from different groups.

Balancing prescription with professional autonomy is also problematic, as creating a universal technical framework suitable for everyone is challenging – a one size does not fit all.

Simplifying the curriculum further remains an ongoing challenge; it is vital to ensure the curriculum genuinely becomes less cluttered rather than simply replacing old complexities with new ones and creating the same problem.

Finally, providing clear guidance on knowledge expectations continues to be an essential yet challenging aspect of curriculum development.

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Opportunities for leading curriculum Development 

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Opportunities for leading curriculum Development 

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There is a need for Scotland to proactively address issues identified in various reports and reviews to continue effectively developing the national curriculum.

While recognising the existing strengths of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), it's essential to clarify the role that knowledge plays within it, refine associated terminology, and reduce overall complexity. It is especially important to ensure a coherent and consistent learning experience for children aged between 3 and 8. Rather than replacing CfE, the aim should be to declutter and refine the existing curriculum framework, facilitating its evolution. Opportunities exist for developing a more refined and coherent technical framework, particularly through clarifying how knowledge is structured and presented, which will support students transitioning effectively from primary to secondary education.

Beneficial opportunities in the curriculum development process include recognising the enthusiasm among educators and practitioners from various sectors to be part of this development, encouraging professional dialogue, collaboration, networking, and knowledge-sharing, and considering what the future may look like. The Curriculum Improvement Cycle working model is designed specifically and facilitate these collaborative and strategic opportunities.

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All policy is translated and has to result in something manageable to practitioners. There are a lot of varying definitions and interpretations of Knowledge, Skills etc. we’re trying to settle on a school approach to this, but it feels like a wider agreement of shared clarity on this would help development in this area.

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Our school has been undertaking a BGE Curricular Review with the aim of considering the WHY of what we teach. It is a question that our staff have struggled with as we banned the option to say ‘because we need it in the Senior Phase.’ It’s empowering to think that we can design to avoid any ‘no-one told me’ moments.

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The Curricular Improvement Cycle offers an opportunity to reflect, review and refine CFE meaningfully. However- how can we raise visibility and participation in this with our schools and staff? There is a real danger it is being lost as ‘white noise’ in the background and that very important decisions with far reaching consequences will be taken with limited practitioner knowledge of what’s happening, let alone engagement with the process.

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How will the inspectorate respond to or adapt their practice to changes made to the curriculum?  Will this enhanced understanding and focus on the balance of knowledge and skills be reflected in documents such as HGIOS?

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Consensus is very difficult to come by in any workplace or social environment. The curriculum that we develop will be socially constructed by numerous voices and bodies

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Within my setting curriculum is not an area we are currently looking at. Due to the nature of where my practitioners are I am needing the relative structure of curriculum to hang pedagogy. Perhaps however with better clarity over curriculum it will be easier to support practitioners to improve and develop pedagogy. Developing a curriculum rationale will be an aspect of development next year for my current setting – how the developments in CIC in the next few months will be interesting to consider when discussing this with my staff.

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Challenges we face as Curriculum Developers

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Challenges we face as Curriculum Developers

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You can't just take from another context and throw it into your own. You need to collaborate and learn from others but also listen to those stakeholders where you are at. We also need to remember the core principles in HGIOS 4 where improvements are made by looking inwards, outwards and forwards. Then we help our learners live out the four capacities now in our specific contexts.

Ethical teaching is asking the question of what should children know?  Not disbanding knowledge in a world where everything can be googled because children don't know what they don't know. It is our job as educators to prepare them for the world. The problem is the world keeps changing and therefore we need to flex with it, constantly gathering views to reflect and adapt to ensure our pupils can for the fast moving world they live in.

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Test scores can narrow the curriculum and kill creativity. Which is what CfE wanted to address. It wants to have a learner centred approach whilst keeping rigor and accountability. However we always must remember what Biesta say is a 'world centred view' for learners and equipping them for the world they are a part of.

Therefore we have a moral/ ethical responsibility in curriculum building, which the CfE affords, to question what our children in our context should know, what is relevant to them? What prepares them for the world? We need to build the KASH that equips them for this world.

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At the Into Headship Conference, you mentioned the four capacities being an input and output consideration. Can you explain more about them being an input?

In view of these, I believe we need to consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If a child is not secure in their identity as an individual how can they be a citizen who contributes beyond themselves? Surely it is only after these are build one can go onto be a successful learner, yes they can learn along the way but it is vital these are built first.

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1. It seems that part of the work of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle is to redress that balance of skills and knowledge within CfE, to give more weight to knowledge, using a know-do-understand approach. How will this work continue to ensure that schools are empowered to adapt curriculum content to make it relevant to their local context?

2. Many argue that a teacher’s role is to take the “what” of learning (e.g. content) and use it to determine the “how” of learning (e.g. pedagogy). However, the flexibility of CfE has expanded this role to include interpreting and resourcing curriculum content, often leaving limited time to explore the most effective pedagogical approaches for  specific lessons. How will the work of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle help teachers prioritise pedagogy?

3. I note that through the pilot curriculum reviews, you have identified an ‘optimal teacher : stakeholder ratio’ of 3:1. I am keen to know what proportion of these stakeholders will be children and young people, and how will they be involved in the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, bearing in mind Article 12 (children’s right to have their views heard and taken seriously) – one of the general principles of UNCRC.

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The need to balance:

Differing stakeholder views (staff, children, parents/carers)

Clarity of curriculum content versus prescription of curriculum content, which is linked with the skills versus knowledge discourse

Pupil voice and teacher expertise – children only know what they know

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CfE is not a prescriptive curriculum – it empowers schools and stakeholders to make the curriculum relevant to local contexts, and this in turn enables creativity within curriculum design.